Hey Reddit, I'm writing a paper on Reddit! What sort of knowledge-retention issues do think are caused by the instantaneous nature of Reddit?

I'm taking a capstone class which looks at how our brain and thought processes have changed since we've moved from a "reading" brain to a "technology" brain (we have been reading The Gutenberg Elegies as well as Proust and the Squid . My inspiration for writing this particular topic is a) my teacher does not know what Reddit is, and b) by this unfortunate occurrence

Obviously I'm not asking for you to write my paper, I'm just curious what the people of the internet have to think.

I don't really have anything substantial to add; but it looks like I can shoehorn my latest pet peeve into this thread. One thing that I notice more and more on reddit is the tendency for people to ask extremely simple questions. Now, of course, there is a massive potential for bias in this observation: the things I know are simple because I know them. But that's not what I mean. What I mean is, people ask questions that could be answered with an easy and obvious google search. It seems that reddit has become a "real" version of ask jeeves. A place where you can ask questions, and someone will give you the answer. Whether that is: a question answerable by a simple google query; a question that requires the personal experience of another human being; a question you were asked in your high school math class; or a question that requires years of expertise in an arcane field.

What astonishes, and dismays, me is the proportion of questions that could be answered by a google search. We live in a time of unprecedented access to information and powerful tools by which to access it. But it seems that as information has become easier to access, we have correspondingly spent less time and energy learning how to access it. We have become nonplussed by information, to the point where we are unwilling to spend a modicum of effort to obtain it, even when we are genuinely interested.

I understand completely. It's why I tried to formulate it open ended. I can go through jstor or many other resources to find the factual information, but if I'm writing a paper about y'all I might as well get your opinion.

But I agree with this sentiment.

I guess more of what my paper is about though, is a comment that was said in my class: "Ive been on reddit once, two days ago. I clicked two links, and read the articles attached to them. I don't remember what either of them were anymore."

I've learned to filter certain patterns. When I open a link with the words "When you see it" I know to look for a black guy or genitalia. When I see the words "karma machine" I know I'm about to D'AWW all over this bitch.

Id say that, when you first enjoy a relationship with reddit, your capacity for knowledge retention is high, and builds strong connection with in depth discussions, you learn alot and your intellect is sharpened with 'new' news and current events. You thrive through this, and remain on the opening wave of global events and enjoy sociological benefit for almost no cost. Eventually though, after a few months and onwards, you just become an intellectually gluttonous blob that just clicks around imagur and looks at kittens while circlejerking fervently.

The average attention span has shortened by quite a substantial amount since before the internet was mainstreamed. That being said, I personally feel like people have gotten dumber, but I have no scientific proof to back that up.That being said… about creativity, it feels like that creativity levels overall are lower than they have been, however I beg to differ….it's just harder to come up with original ideas nowadays because there are thousands of years of originality behind us.I feel like you're going to figure out who I am. Kudos to you if you do =P